by Ranae Rose
Every once in a while, Arianna reread the ten letters she’d collected so far. And she always read new ones on the day they arrived. That was as far as she’d taken the openness of the adoption.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care, or that she felt intimidated by the family who was raising her baby. On the contrary; she’d chosen the couple herself and they’d been a bright spot in the otherwise confusing and lonely period of her pregnancy. They’d been so kind and understanding – in ways her family often hadn’t been – and that was what had reinforced her decision to choose adoption.
They’d flown in from Connecticut during the last trimester of Arianna’s pregnancy just to meet with her, and talking to them had been a relief. Her parents had been all for the adoption – actually, they’d suggested it first, almost as soon as she’d confessed her condition – but they’d still treated her pregnancy as something shameful. An epic mistake that she’d felt hanging over her head like a black cloud any time her mother or father had so much as glanced at her.
As soon as her pregnancy had started to show, everyone – her family included – had looked at her differently. It’d been like she wasn’t even a person anymore, just a walking disappointment for family and strangers alike to heap their judgment on.
Joy and Dave, on the other hand, had talked about her pregnancy like it was some sort of gift. The contrast had been so stark that Arianna had started shedding tears of relief about five minutes into their first conversation. It was then that she’d realized she definitely wanted them to be her daughter’s parents. She’d even invited Joy to be present for the birth.
They’d told her she’d be welcome to come see them in Connecticut, if she ever wanted to. While Arianna had appreciated it, she’d never gone. Her daughter was their daughter, now; it would simply hurt too much to visit. Knowing she was healthy and happy was enough … or at least as close to enough as it could get.
Fact was, even ten years later, having given up her baby still hurt. It always would, even if she knew her daughter was much better off with Joy and Dave… It would always hurt because she loved her, and it was hard to love someone so much and have so many years and miles between herself and them. Not a day went by that she didn’t think of her.
Still, some days were worse than others, and this was definitely one of those days. Maybe it was because she’d spent nearly two weeks caring for Emily only to have that situation ended abruptly, but she felt the loss more acutely than she had at any time since her daughter’s last birthday.
As stinging pressure mounted behind her eyes, she picked up the first picture and traced the contour of her newborn daughter’s tiny cheek.
From somewhere in the distance, her phone rang.
After laying down the picture, it took her a minute to remember where she’d left her phone. By the time she found it on the kitchen counter, it was on its fourth ring. She barely glanced at the screen before answering, and the name there was blurred by unshed tears. “Hello?”
She did her best to keep her voice steady, in case it was one of her clients – maybe the start-up tech firm she was currently designing a logo for.
“Arianna.”
Those three syllables, spoken in a voice that made her heart beat faster even in the midst of freshly-rekindled grief, dispelled all notions of the man on the other end of the connection being a client.
“James.”
A second or two of silence slipped by, and she used the opportunity to wipe the moisture from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, as if there could be any doubt. “How are things?”
“Quiet,” she said. “Really quiet, without Emily or my niece here. I got a lot of work done today.” At the moment, she couldn’t have cared less about that, but pretending that she did beat telling James she’d almost been in tears over a box of photos.
“That’s good. Listen… Remember how I told you my boss Jed is getting married in a couple weeks?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m allowed to bring someone to the wedding. A date. Would you like to come with me?”
His question sliced through her, inciting a split second of excitement and decimating it just as quickly. A couple days ago, she would’ve been delighted if he’d asked her to go as his date to his boss’ wedding. That was before he’d heard from his sister – before Arianna had realized that he’d never want to be with a woman who’d given up her own child, for any reason.
She couldn’t blame him. Not really, in light of how he’d grown up and what his sister had put him through now, as an adult. But understanding why he felt the way he did didn’t make it any less painful for her. She liked him so much … and wanted so badly to be someone he could like back.
But that just wasn’t going to happen. She’d faced hard realities before, and steeled herself to do so again now.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she forced herself to say, fully aware that there was no way she could keep her secret over the coming weeks. Feeling like she was hiding something from him for just the past couple days had been utterly exhausting. Besides, she didn’t want to have secrets. If she was ever going to really fall in love, it had to be with someone who could love her – the real her – back.
“You don’t?”
She’d spent so much time dwelling on his voice – replaying things he’d said to her inside her head – that she could detect traces of surprise and even pain in his tone. He wasn’t one to wear his heart on his sleeve, but over the course of just a couple weeks, she’d gotten to know him well enough to know that she’d hurt him.
“No. James… I’ve really enjoyed these past couple weeks.” Pressure built up behind her eyes again, but she absolutely refused to give in to it. “But I can’t go with you to the wedding, because I don’t think what we have is made to last much longer. We’re just not compatible enough … you’ll be tired of me by the time your boss gets married, I’m sure.”
He was quiet for so long that she actually thought he might’ve hung up. Her heart plunged, then leapt painfully back into place when the sound of his voice came from the other end of the connection.
“Tired of you? Do you really think that?”
“Yes.” Maybe ‘disgusted by’ would’ve been a more accurate choice of words, but the gist was the same, and she’d decided to keep her secret just that – secret.
She just couldn’t deal with the judgmental looks, the passive-aggressive disgust that would reveal itself in barbed questions and exclamations of disbelief. Not from James. As a pregnant teen, she’d heard it all from her own family, and even now, a decade later, she wasn’t ready to relive it all again. It was simple, really: she liked and respected him too much to bear his judgment. It would crush her.
At least this way, she wouldn’t have those excruciating memories to spoil the amazing ones he’d given her. And he wouldn’t have to bear the burden of knowing he’d been involved with someone with a past like hers. It was better this way, for both of them.
“You don’t know a damn thing about me if you think I’m going to be tired of you in a couple weeks,” he said.
The pressure behind her eyes increased, becoming painful. “Maybe you’re right – maybe we don’t know that much about each other. Which is why you’re bound to be disappointed if things go any further. I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to trust me. There’s no way this can work.”
“Did I do something? Say something to piss you off? Because—”
“No. You didn’t do or say anything to make me mad. Really.” He’d treated her wonderfully, but that was because he didn’t know the truth about her.
“Okay. So you’re just tired of me already. I got it.” His voice rang with disappointment and resignation.
An ache spread through the center of Arianna’s chest, right over her heart. “No. It’s not that.” She bit her tongue before she could say something cliché like ‘it’s not you, it’s me’.
“
It’s all right, Arianna. I always knew you were out of my league.”
He hung up before she could say another word.
She couldn’t have spoken anyway, even though he had it all backwards. Her throat had constricted and the tears she’d been working so hard to hold back had finally begun to slip free, one by one. She’d never be free of the choices she’d made when she’d been just 16; even now the consequences radiated throughout her life, causing pain.
For the second time in her life, she’d given up someone she loved for the sake of what was best. It was a miserable feeling, no matter how much sense it made, and something told her that years from now she’d still be thinking of this loss, just like she still thought of the first one.
* * * * *
“Hey James.” Jed stood outside James’ booth, taking up the entire aisle that ran down the center of Hot Ink. “Karen wants to know if your date will want steak or salmon at the reception.”
James tensed as he finished readjusting his tattoo chair, which had accommodated a client just five minutes ago. “Don’t worry about it; I’m not bringing anyone.”
Jed’s eyebrows crept together, lining his forehead. “Karen said you were going to bring a woman you’d been seeing. She said you met her here.”
“We’re not seeing each other anymore.” Saying it out loud was a bitch. As he spoke, dual waves of frustration and shame crept over him, underlaid by deep disappointment. He would’ve felt stupid admitting it now, but he’d been completely caught off guard when Arianna had told him she didn’t want to see him anymore.
The more he thought about her and what she’d said, the more he felt like a jackass for being shocked. Not only was Arianna the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, she was smart and educated, selfless and self-sufficient. A woman like that was out of virtually any guy’s league, let alone his. She could have anyone, so what exactly did he have to offer her in the long run?
The sex they’d had had been unbelievably fucking hot. He knew she’d loved it; he wasn’t stupid or self-depreciating enough to pretend otherwise. But obviously, she wanted something more than that – something she didn’t think he could give her.
“That’s too bad.” Jed just stood there, and James felt the other man’s gaze boring into him.
“Sorry if I fucked up your guest count, or whatever.”
“Not a big deal. All this planning is last-minute, anyway. You sure you don’t wanna bring anyone?”
“Yeah.” He turned his back to Jed, messing around with supplies inside his booth as a thinly-veiled invitation for Jed to leave him alone.
No such luck.
“Karen seemed to think you two were pretty serious. Why the sudden change?”
James swallowed a knot of frustration, willing the tension out of his muscles. “We weren’t as serious as I thought. Judgment error, that’s all.”
“Maybe it’s none of my business, but whatever you had with this girl started here in my shop, so I’m gonna butt in anyway. After Karen and I first got together, there was a time when I thought she wasn’t interested in me anymore. Figured she’d gotten tired of me, and how could I blame her? She could have anyone she wanted.”
James heard what Jed was saying, but didn’t dare let it resurrect any sort of hope inside him. Not everyone was as lucky as Jed and Karen.
“I was wrong,” Jed said. “And when I realized that, I felt pretty damn stupid. So before you write whatever you had with this girl off as a lost cause, you need to make sure you’re not just being stupid.”
James met Jed’s eyes. “Did Karen ever tell you that you two just weren’t compatible? That what you had – everything you’d thought had been going so great – wasn’t cut out to last?”
Jed’s silence said it all – Karen had never said anything like that to him. Which was no surprise; anyone who’d ever seen them together could see that she loved him.
“Shit. Sorry.”
He left James alone, just like he’d wanted. It wasn’t exactly the relief he’d thought it would be.
In less than five minutes, he was back. “You wanna go out for a drink tonight?”
James shook his head. “Can’t. Have to take care of Emily.” Having a baby basically meant that he couldn’t go anywhere or do anything that wasn’t baby-friendly, and a bar definitely wasn’t that.
“Karen will be glad to watch her while we go out for a while – I just called and asked her. She has a shoot she’ll be wrapping up around seven, and then she’ll be free.”
“I don’t wanna take advantage—”
“You’re not sitting at home alone with that baby and being miserable. We’ll let Tyler close up tonight, and you and I will head out after your last appointment.”
* * * * *
Arianna tapped away on her keyboard, ignoring the Photoshop icon at the bottom of her screen, where the program was hidden away. She’d planned to wrap up work on her logo design, give it a last going-over before presenting the final product to her client tomorrow. Instead, she ignored her job, focusing on her internet browser instead. Selena had just picked up Maya, and after a full day of babysitting the little girl, Arianna was physically and emotionally exhausted.
For the first time in nearly a year, she logged onto the online birthmother support forum she’d first started using as a teenager. Online conversation wasn’t a perfect substitute for real human interaction, but she had a surplus of people in real life who could never understand what she’d gone through, and she was at her limit.
For nearly an hour, she scrolled through the forum, reading others’ threads, soothed a little by the reminder that she wasn’t alone in her experiences or feelings, even if it felt like it. Eventually, she worked up the courage to stop lurking and post a thread of her own.
After typing and deleting a subject line several times, she finally settled on: ‘Dating as a first mom – is it possible to find someone who understands?’
In the body of her post, she briefly shared that she’d ended a relationship with someone she’d really liked because he couldn’t have accepted the decision she’d made to give her daughter a life with an adoptive family.
Replies started coming in within minutes. Some of them were supportive, written by women who reported finding understanding significant others. Some of them were in happy dating relationships, and others were married. Some even had children with their boyfriends or husbands now. Those replies offered the hope Arianna had sought, though right now she couldn’t think past James to imagine another man entering her life.
Other replies were more along the lines of commiseration. It seemed like a lot of women had dated men who’d said hurtful things, or even put them down for choosing to place their babies with adoptive families.
‘If he can’t accept that your decision was a sacrifice, not an easy way out, then you deserve better,’ read one user’s reply.
‘I dated a guy just like him once,’ said another. ‘I hoped he’d come around eventually, but he never did. I always felt judged by him, and eventually I got tired of it. I wanted to have a family someday, but even though he claimed we were serious, every time I brought it up he’d blow me off, like he couldn’t believe I’d want to have another baby. Breaking it off with him was one of the smartest decisions I ever made. You’ve been through enough pain – don’t stay with someone who’s only going to hurt you.’
Other replies were more blunt. ‘Forget about him. You deserve a real man, not a selfish jerk who can’t wrap his head around the fact that placing a baby with adoptive parents isn’t an easy way out. If he broke up with you after he found out about your baby, he doesn’t deserve you.’
Arianna’s heart sank as she read the last reply, and her fingers tingled with the urge to type back, to defend James. Somehow, she’d messed even this up – hadn’t been clear enough. He wasn’t a selfish jerk. He was anything but.
‘I’m the one who ended things, not him,’ she wrote. ‘I think my original post was misleading. He’s a wonderful guy,
but I knew he wouldn’t be able to understand why I placed my daughter for adoption because of some things he’s endured in his personal life, and I felt like I couldn’t stand to face his disappointment.’
She forced herself to work on the logo for several minutes, then brought up her browser and refreshed the page.
The other user had written back. ‘If he’s so wonderful, why didn’t you tell him and at least give him a chance? You never know – his reaction might surprise you.’
The other woman’s reply cut Arianna to the quick, inciting a bout of guilt and second-guessing. At the same time, she couldn’t help but think of the way James had been saddled with his niece, and the years he’d spent in foster care. He hadn’t gone into much detail, but he obviously hadn’t had a happy childhood.
The words he’d spoken on their second date echoed inside her head, playing on a loop: “What kind of person would just leave their own kid? Every kid deserves to be taken care of by their own parents, not pawned off on whoever will do the job.”
Quickly, she typed ‘I’m not that brave,’ and closed the browser.
It was the sad truth.
CHAPTER 11
“It’s a damn good thing you’re getting married,” James said. “If anyone needs a ring on their finger, it’s you.”
The bar was crowded with both men and women, but most of the females seemed to have eyes only for Jed. Maybe it was the fact that he radiated indifference that drove them so crazy; with his stoic expression and knack for speaking in one or two word sentences, he gave ‘hard to get’ a whole new meaning.
Or maybe it was the fact that his massive size and tapestry of tattoos made him stand out so severely. If the women at the end of the bar stared at him any harder, their overly made-up eyes were likely to pop right out of their skulls.
Jed made a wordless sound that was something like a grunt, then took a long sip of his beer. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”